


Emotional Range Of A Teaspoon

by badluckvixen13 (alteringviews)



Series: 1 Million for Black Hermione [22]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Black Hermione Granger
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-19
Updated: 2017-03-19
Packaged: 2018-10-08 02:02:11
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,768
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10375380
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alteringviews/pseuds/badluckvixen13
Summary: June 29th, 2000...She licked her lips and shook her head, not sure what to say, bt she decided on: I'm back in England.





	

America had been worlds different than Britain. Over there, people were so very enthralled with her accent. The warmth had darkened her, warmed her considerably, but like Brazil and everywhere else she’d drifted through since deciding to take her wizarding hiatus, she grew bored. After wandering around the globe, it seemed that she had lost her ability to hold an interest in anything-- a listless melancholy. Somehow, she’d found herself here of all places, or perhaps this was where she should have gone all along. 

It’s an odd sort of feeling, she thought, sitting in the middle of Sydney. She’d flown around the world, continent hopping with no real reason, no real thought to it at all other than it was where she wanted to be. 

It was just…

She sighed, pulling her legs up to her knees, the slight chill of the season nipping at her. She felt something colder still at the core of her. It was the same kind of cold she’d felt when she’d stood in the hallway and erased herself from the minds of her parents. Odder still that the fact that she’d erased most of the hallmarks of her existence had not scared her, had not frightened her, had not even sparked a moment of existential panic...because they’d be safe this way. Not once had she’d given a thought to the fact that she had no family to return to, no life outside of the world of wizardry who hated the very blood that had made her into the person she was. 

Never thought of how great an act of self-loathing it had been to essentially erase herself from the muggle heritage… and how easy it had been to do it with magic. 

She shuddered at the though. Magic… There was a reason why she was staying away from it. There was a heady, inexplicable power and danger that came with a wand in her hand. She could be anything, anyone at any time with it. She shuddered thinking of how she’d stowed the Time-Turner away in that spelled vault in the very heart of Gringotts. She could have gone anywhere in time, relived her life and it had been tempting…

So tempting to just go back and do it over, but she’d refrained from that. Messing around with time was dangerous to say the least and she’d never been as weak as to regret anything in her life. It was what she wanted at the time and now she no longer wanted it. 

That was all there was to it.  

Magic, knowledge, and the infinity demi-monde of the wizarding world was what she wanted then, and now she just didn’t. 

It was the reason she wasn’t carrying her wand around now, the reason she’d been drifting around the world for months with nothing but her magic bag, her wand safely left at 12 Grimmauld place, guarded by a host of Boggarts and Harry’s own melancholy. It was a heady, heart-breaking feeling now that swelled and threatened to suffocate her with its weight. 

With a little wave and a thought...she’d erased everything. Not just herself, but a whole life and recreated them anew, transplanted them across the ocean even...Her past, her present, and maybe her future along with it...or even worse--created some alternate reality in which the question of her worth had never been. 

She shuddered.  _ It was for the best. _

The best for her parents, the best for Harry, the best for the future of the Muggle and Wizarding world. That is what she told herself then to make her do it, but it had not been much of a fight, yet now all the what ifs and insecurities, the doubt, were swirling between her ears, roaring and burning like the heart of a falling star. 

It had been for the best. But had it been worth it? Had Ron or Harry been worth it? Had she truly done anything meaningful? Had the years of her existence truly been substantial or even meaningful enough to pay for a new world? She scoffed at the thought, her eyes burning. This was not a new world. A world without Voldemort perhaps, a world without family, a world without--

“Such a pretty face to be so sad,” a voice said. She looked up at the voice and stared up at the familiar planes of their faces. 

Wendell and Monica Wilkins… no longer Granger and a baby strapped to the ghost of her father’s chest. A baby girl from the pink hat on her brown head and the the pacifier in her mouth. Her chubby brown face and brown eyes looked at her and she’s struck with the realization that this baby girl could have been her if not for fate or that sneaky magical gene that had decided to pop up in Hermione. Maybe this baby girl would be the most brilliant librarian and ice skater the world had ever known… Maybe she would be a ballerina instead. 

The point was that she wouldn’t be a witch, free to live her life firmly in one world instead of constantly straddling the two. Monica had nearly died attempting to bring Hermione into the world and for that reason, she and Wendell had agreed to have her tubes tied and the next child they had would be adopted. The memory of why was obscured, changed to a dangerous miscarriage, but the reasoning remained and made real in the little girl in pink.

“Oh dear, why are you crying? Is Sydney so bad?” Monica asked sitting next to her as Hermione sniffled and wiped her face. 

“No,... I just… it has been quite a difficult time for me as of late. My apologies for staring…”

“Well dear, I can’t speak to whatever problems you are facing, but I know the best cure of sadness is hot chocolate or ice cream… depending on the season.”

She gave her a misty smile as Monica told Wendell to not even start on what it could do to her teeth. She chuckled a little bit, this conversation a ghost of so many before it.

“This is not the time to lecture about dental hygiene dear,” Monica scolded, shaking her head and coaxing Hermione off the bench. 

“What is your name dear?”

“Call me Jean,” she said. “We’ve met before.”

Monica blinked considering her face for a moment before gasping, “I didn’t even recognize you! My goodness, how are you dear? We must catch up!”

Hermione wasn’t sure what made her go with Monica and Wendell into the coffee shop, to take the cup of hot cocoa she’d been given, but she does. She sits in the coffee shop for over an hour talking with them, smiling at Hermione Wilkins who babbled away in her backpack, playing with whatever was attached to it and seemingly taking a liking to Hermione. She’d found during her travels that muggle children, especially babies, had really taken a liking to her. She assumed it was the magic still teeming in her blood. When they invite her for dinner, she declines saying she had other plans.

“But… perhaps another time?” She asked hopefully, knowing that she was just causing herself more heartache.

She’d let them go so they could be safe. There was no telling what could happen if she stayed around them, if she’d slip up, if maybe she broke their minds with being confronted with the gaps in their memories. She’d been thorough, but the human mind was a tricky thing to trick completely, no matter what the books said.

“Of course dear!” Monica said handing her a card. “The invitation is always open, here. Our personal number is on the back. Whenever you like dear. I think it’s important to keep in touch.”

Hermione took the card against her better, more logical instincts and nodded. Gods, what was she doing? It’s something she tried to answer for the days before she calls them up. All through dinner, the laughter and the like that comes with it. When they ask her about the name “Jean” she tells them it’s her middle name. 

“Sometimes… it just hurts a little too much to use the actual one.”

They nodded sadly in understanding, “It will get better with time.”

Hermione looked at them hopelessly… No. No, it wouldn’t ever get better because here were her parents and they didn’t even remember her. The baby girl in their arms named at once after her and her grandmother whom she couldn’t save. 

She finds oddly that she can’t even manage to cry any longer, too wrung out from the war perhaps to do so. Instead, she finds a flat in Sydney to rent out for a little while and has her wizarding mail forwarded to her through the appropriate channels. She finds a job in a Swiss Chocolate shop, more than enough to cover rent until the Wilkins offer her the small cottage in the back of their house. 

She takes it while a part of her screams not to do this to herself, that it was just a fantasy, that she could never have them back. 

She’d gone to their old house at the end of the war to see it filled with a new family, a little girl in her old room, playing on her old block...To her muggle elementary school, her daycare, her grandmother’s old house… 

Fragments of a life that didn’t exist anymore.

“Have some candy,” Wendell offered presenting her with the bowl of familiar sugar-free candies. She smiled at took one as he sat down. 

“Gosh, you look just like my mother,” Wendell said with a shake of his head, looking up at the family picture he had of the three of them. Monica, the late hermione, and Wendell sitting together and smiling into the camera. 

Yes, she did look just like her grandmother who seemed to have barely aged over her long life. Hermione looked at the photo and bit back a broken whimper.

“It’s a shame little Hermione won’t ever get to meet her,” he said whimsically.

She nodded and he looked at her.

“So, now that I’ve got you alone, and before Monica gets back, how exactly does a beautiful young girl like yourself end up in Sydney all alone? I’m sure your parents are worried sick.”

Her lips twitched, “I...My parents were… in an accident. They don’t remember me.”

He licked his lips, “Somehow… I don’t believe that’s true. The mind may forget, but the heart doesn’t.”

She looked at him a little lost for words as he smiled, “But no boyfriend to chase after you?”

She laughed, “Not many men breaking down my door. I keep changing it.”

He laughed then and somehow, she found herself smiling as he told her plainly not to settle for anyone that wasn’t perfect for her. She couldn’t help but wonder how much this conversation had changed with his memories gone. 

“Between someone you’ve known for years,” she started. “Who doesn’t respect you and someone who has seen you at your worst, known your for a short time, and respects you completely as a person, as you are.”

Wendell chuckled, “Well of course the second. If the first hasn’t gotten it by now, he isn’t going to get it without a good wake up call.”

She snorted, “And what would that wake up call be?”

“You with another man,” he said easily. “Then, he’d scramble and try really hard.”

Hermione shook her head, “At least until he’s secure in his position?”

Wendell nodded, “It depends on the kind of bloke. Some realize their error and never slip, some are just so insecure that there is nothing you can do…”

“What would you tell Hermione?”

“To be safe.”

Hermione nodded and looked back towards the picture, intrigued that his answers were so...she wouldn’t say different than before, just… with a different light. 

“To be happy,” he said with a nod. “I’d want her to be happy… even if I’d probably be a little selfish and tell her to be safe first.”

“Safe?”

He nodded, “There is a safety in being with someone you’ve known for a long time, someone that all of your friends know as well. A comfort if you will in that you already know them so well that there’s so little that could change… New people...well they’re a gamble.”

“Everyone started off as a new person in someone’s life,” she said. “Why should that matter?”

He looked at her stunned for a second, “Hm… I never thought of it that way before… I suppose you’re right.”

Monica came in with the baby babbling away, “Wendell, don’t tell me you’ve been asking those questions…”

He beamed, “I couldn’t help it. We’ve practically adopted her, haven’t we?”

Hermione looked between them. 

“An honorary Wilkins.”

Hermione felt her eyes burn and laughed with a nod, “An honorary Wilkins.”

She runs with Monica in the mornings, pushing baby Hermione through the streets as they do. She eats dinner with them most nights and for a while she feels… normal, like they’re in England and everything is okay, like the war and the wizarding world just don’t exist. 

It’s a fantasy she knows, just enough to let her relax as the New Year comes. Before she knows it, she’s lived in Sydney for about nine months and she can feel the familiar urge to do things starting to build again. 

“I’m going back to England,” she said one day over dinner with the baby Hermione in her high chair forcing mushy spaghetti into her mouth.

Wendell nodded, “We thought you might be.”

“Someone waiting for you?”

She blew out a breath, “Something like that.”

Monica nodded, “Well dear, keep in touch okay?”

She nodded. “I will, I promise.”

Hermione babbled at her and cried as Hermione packed the few things she’d brought with her and climbed into the taxi to take the flight back to England. They hug her and give her snacks for the plane ride. Wendell’s bag is filled with dental appropriate snacks while Monica’s is filled with chocolate and other goodies. 

“Thank you,” she said. “For everything.”

They smiled at her, “We hope your Viktor is still waiting for you.”

She chuckled, “Maybe.”

“I’m still rooting for Ron. He’ll get it together.”

Monica rolled her eyes, “Just because you did does not mean that every boy is capable of becoming a man.”

Hermione laughed and kissed the baby Hermione on her forehead telling her to be good before leaving and sighed, letting the months wash over her. It was time, wasn’t it? They were happy. So very happy and safe, no matter what her doubts said… they were safe and that was really all that mattered. Angelo was there at the gate when she stepped off the plane, there to take her to lunch and breathe. 

“You alright, champ?”

She nodded, “I’m better… visited my parents.”

“How are they?”

“Good,” she said with a smile and a nod. “They’re good. New baby…”

“Oh?”

“Hermione.”

He looked down, grim, “I know… it’s hard for you.”

She shook her head, “They’re happy… that’s all that matters… and now… We have new memories together.”

Never mind that they didn’t know, and maybe wouldn’t ever know, that she was their daughter too. He nodded and told her that if she needed anything, he’d be there.

“The ice will wait, even if you never want to get back on it.”

“I will,” she said. “One day.”

She goes to 12 Grimmauld and on the way she penned a letter to Viktor, Harry and Ginny...

_ June 29th, 2000… _

She licked her lips and shook her head not sure what to say but she decided on:  _ I’m back in England  _ and closed them all. She’d send them when she was ready to, but for now, she just wanted to lay down. 

In the end, she sends them from a public owlery and not too far from the inn she stays at for the night before contemplating how she would get into 12 Grimmauld and get her wand without seeing Harry.

She almost laughs how easy it is to do as he and Ginny are at the Burrow most days anyway. She left a note for them before leaving and feels like just maybe she’d stretched her emotional range a little more, let down the hood of occlumency a little bit. Maybe she now had the emotional range of a teaspoon as it was no longer compressed into the size of an atom. 


End file.
